Advice on simple budget friendly speaker upgrade.

rickscott · Jun 12, 2026

Goal is to swap out the factory speakers with aftermarket plug and play speakers , and the Beat Sonic amp for hopefully a noticeable improvement over the oem speakers - with full understanding this is a budget solution

2024 Prius Prime XSE with 12.8 infotainment.

I've ordered the Beat Sonic ENE 3T3 amp

Four Kicker KSC67 - for front and back doors

Two JL C2-075ct tweeters for dash

I'm comfortable dropping all this in - plug and play all parts needed come from Crutchfield - easy and have done before to other cars .

My question is - I have no real car stereo technical understanding - besides new speakers all around and the plug and play amp is there anything else simple I can do to improve sound while I've got it all open and doing the install?

I know when I pan back to the rear seat oem speakers they sound awful - this sort of influenced this upgrade - hope at the very least that will be improved a little

Any and all advice welcome

Thanks in advance

rickscott · Jun 20, 2026 at 6:56 PM

Long story short for the money and time spent absolutely worth it - the difference is notable and super enjoyable - not going to blow away an audiophile, but surpasses my expectations .

2 pairs of Kicker KS for front and back $260
JL tweeters for dash $159
BeatSonic amp (the model with sub woofer outs in case I want to add). $349
Total $768

I did the instal in three parts - as parts came in -
first amp, not even an hour ,
then tweeters, probably over an hour ,
then door speakers front and back - couple hours -
it was approximately 4.5 hours working slow because it had been well over five years since I had done this.
I watched all the install videos on YouTube a couple of times, had all tools needed, so was ready for a simple install - everything was easy

If you are not happy with the sound of your Prius I say jump in worth the time and money.

So my question, for those who installed a subwoofer, worth time and money? Is there a sub that fits under passenger seat of 2024 Prius Prime ?

soft_r · Jun 21, 2026 at 2:47 PM

Those tweeters you bought are 8ohm, the factory speakers are 4ohm I believe, and the door speakers you ordered are 4ohm. That amp looks like it just intercepts the factory harness and hijacks it, neat but that means you'll be driving the dash speakers and front door speakers on the same channels. They're connected to each other via the factory wiring. So no individual volume control for the tweeters to adjust them.

Keep the receipt handy for the rear door speakers because if the beatsonic doesn't feed them a new input and all it does it passes the rear signal to the rear doors then they're not worth replacing, rear door signal is not the same as the front. And recently I've wondered if Toyota might be doing differential fill for the rear speakers, but I'm too lazy to go back to factory to test for something that doesn't matter much to me.

Replace the tweeters with CDT Unity 7.5 or 8.0 wideband drivers, install a bass blocker capacitor on the positive wire to each. They're similarly priced to your 8ohm tweeters. So far the best ones I've found and even without any EQ adjustment they sound great.

Unless you're adding a subwoofer right now I really don't think the Beat Sonic ENE 3T3 is a justified purchase. The factory head unit puts out enough power to drive speakers loud enough for most people. I don't have my notes but I think I tested up to vol 50 and there was no clipping.

I'd suggest installing the speakers, listen to a few songs, then hook up the amp and see if it sounds wildly different to you. The speaker change will likely make the biggest difference.

rickscott · Jun 21, 2026 at 4:02 PM

Thanks for the reply, greatly appreciate, also a little over my head - let me ask some questions to help clarify and apologize in advance for lack of knowledge around this.

• "tweeters you bought are 8ohm, the factory speakers are 4ohm"

yes, that is correct. should they all be matching at 4ohm? no benefits of 8ohm tweeters?

• "So no individual volume control for the tweeters to adjust them"

I'm confused here for sure - is there individual volume control for tweeter? do you mean in sound setting, where you adjust treble, mid, bass , that the mid and treble is locked together and don't respond to individual adjustment?

• "Keep the receipt handy for the rear door speakers because if the beatsonic doesn't feed them a new input and all it does it passes the rear signal to the rear doors then they're not worth replacing"

This is super subjective and lacking any form of measurement on my part , but, first thing I did was plug in the amp with all factory speakers still installed and to my ears it was an over all improvement that I could notice. They simply did not sound as muddy with all the mids overlapping and lacking definition.

• "all it does it passes the rear signal to the rear doors then they're not worth replacing"

When panned back to just the factory rears they sounded crappy to me. I'm sure this had to do with the signal they were getting, as they are the same factory speakers in the front which didn't sound as bad .

it was $129 to replace the two rears, so even if only the placebo effect ( which it could be : ) ) I do think it sounds better when I panned system back to rear speaker with Kickers installed - still notice there is a difference over all between fronts and rears.

• "Unless you're adding a subwoofer right now I really don't think the Beat Sonic ENE 3T3 is a justified purchase"

that is my upgrade plan down the road - to add a small sub under the front seat
you can purchase the exact same amp for $50 less without the sub outs

• "I'd suggest installing the speakers, listen to a few songs, then hook up the amp and see if it sounds wildly different to you. The speaker change will likely make the biggest difference."

yes did this - plugged and unplugged listened both ways - would not say "wildly different" but would say a noticeable improvement

Thanks for your comments - going to drive around for a couple of weeks and think about sub upgrade.

Best

Rick

soft_r said: ↑

Those tweeters you bought are 8ohm, the factory speakers are 4ohm I believe, and the door speakers you ordered are 4ohm. That amp looks like it just intercepts the factory harness and hijacks it, neat but that means you'll be driving the dash speakers and front door speakers on the same channels. They're connected to each other via the factory wiring. So no individual volume control for the tweeters to adjust them.

Keep the receipt handy for the rear door speakers because if the beatsonic doesn't feed them a new input and all it does it passes the rear signal to the rear doors then they're not worth replacing, rear door signal is not the same as the front. And recently I've wondered if Toyota might be doing differential fill for the rear speakers, but I'm too lazy to go back to factory to test for something that doesn't matter much to me.

Replace the tweeters with CDT Unity 7.5 or 8.0 wideband drivers, install a bass blocker capacitor on the positive wire to each. They're similarly priced to your 8ohm tweeters. So far the best ones I've found and even without any EQ adjustment they sound great.

Unless you're adding a subwoofer right now I really don't think the Beat Sonic ENE 3T3 is a justified purchase. The factory head unit puts out enough power to drive speakers loud enough for most people. I don't have my notes but I think I tested up to vol 50 and there was no clipping.

I'd suggest installing the speakers, listen to a few songs, then hook up the amp and see if it sounds wildly different to you. The speaker change will likely make the biggest difference.
Click to expand...

soft_r · Jun 21, 2026 at 5:25 PM

Front Right door, and front right tweeter is on the same channel. Front left door and front left tweeter are on a share channel as well. This means that any adjustment you do for one speaker on a shared channel, the other speaker gets. So you can't adjust tweeter volume independently of door speakers. This is kind of important because typically tweeters will need a bit of volume reduction to play at the same level you hear your door speakers at.

And you typically want your speakers running at the same impedance (2/4/8ohm) unless there's a specific reason you have for not doing it. Actually since it's the tweeters at 8ohm maybe this won't be bad. Since if the tweeter and door are wired in parallel (i think it is), the door will get more power than the tweeter. Ok this might actually work for your situation now that I think about it more. I think you might have unintentionally solved your tweeter/door volume inbalance.

"This is super subjective and lacking any form of measurement on my part , but, first thing I did was plug in the amp with all factory speakers still installed and to my ears it was an over all improvement that I could notice."

There's two stereo signals coming from the factory head unit. The signal to front speakers is full. The signal to the back speakers is not a full signal. This is a common Toyota setup across MANY vehicles of theirs over many years. Google toyota rear speakers not full signal. So if your amp replaces that rear signal with a copied or modified front signal, then upgrading the rear speakers is worth it. If all it did was pass through the quiet rear signal with no change then it would not be worth it to change the rear speakers.

Advice on simple budget friendly speaker upgrade.

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Advice on simple budget friendly speaker upgrade.

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